Biller 'Very Satisfied' With Voyager

The man at the helm of Star Trek Voyager for its final year in the Delta Quadrant, Kenneth Biller, recently reflected on the show's final episodes.

"Obviously you're never going to satisfy everyone; there are fans who want certain things to happen in certain ways," he told Star Trek: The Magazine (via Voyager's Delights. "I think all you can really do is try to satisfy yourself, try to surprise yourself, try to make yourself laugh, to make yourself feel something; and if you're succeeding in doing that, then hopefully it's going to translate to the audience. I personally feel very satisfied with the way that the season was wrapped up."

"Having said that, I don't think we've wrapped up all of these characters in a neat little bow; the audience is free to imagine what's going to happen to them. But I'm really happy with the mix of episodes, and I said at the beginning of the season that I hope we saved the best for last. I'm not really the one to judge, but I would like to think now that it's over that we did save the best for last, and that people were happy with the season and enjoyed it and thought that it was good storytelling. And that's all one can hope."

The producer felt that one of the show's strengths was the way each episode was self contained. "It had a little more continuity this year because it was the last season, but we have always hoped that the audience was able to tune in and watch an episode and not feel like they're lost if they hadn't seen the episodes that came before it. We tried to craft a little movie each week - or in some cases a big movie - that is satisfying in its own right. I hope the legacy of Voyager is that when people look back on the show they can pick out 30 or 40 episodes which were really, really fine and interesting storytelling."

Another element Biller felt the show will be remembered for is its strong female cast. "It's interesting; if you look at the finale the main characters are not one but two Janeways, the main villain is the Borg Queen, and a major player in it is Seven of Nine. And Torres has been a very strong character for us. I think those strong female characters are a feather in Voyager's cap; even a bunch of hairy men did a good job of continuing to write those characters once Jeri Taylor left!"

Some fans were disappointed that the ship came home only during the final minutes of 'Endgame.' Biller explained that alternative options had been discussed, and explained why the staff chose to go with this method to bring the ship back to Earth. "At various points we thought we'd get the ship back to Earth at the end of Season Four or the end of Season Six or the middle of Season Seven, when the audience didn't expect it," he said. "And we had a bunch of stories to tell when we got home - is Seven of Nine going to be dissected in a lab because she's a Borg, what's going to happen to the Doctor - is he an obsolete program now? But would they really do that? No; they probably would believe what Captain Janeway would tell them, which is that the Maquis and Seven have become loyal members of the crew, and that the Doctor has exceeded the sum of his subroutines."

"It also became clear to us - and this was a big central theme of the two-hour finale in, I think, a very poignant and moving way - that Voyager is about the journey; it's about the family that's been created on this ship, and what happens to them along the way."

More from Biller, including his thoughts on the way season seven tackled individual characters, can be found in this month's edition of Star Trek: The Magazine. Alternatively, a copy of the interview with Biller can be found here at Voyager's Delights.